


402. lost in the 50s

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [188]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 16:45:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9193964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Helena wants to like prom, but mostly she doesn’t.





	

Helena wants to like prom, but mostly she doesn’t. The music is too loud. There isn’t any punch. The dance floor is a close press of sweaty teenage bodies, all of them yelling at the top of their lungs. She’s stupid: she thought it would be like an old movie, soft pretty colors, boys and girls swaying. She thinks some of the people out there are actually having sex. Maybe? She can’t tell. She doesn’t want to look.

They aren’t allowed to leave until eleven-o-clock, for reasons Helena doesn’t know. She wipes her palms on her puffed white dress. She’d tried to pin her hair back, earlier, but it’s already falling out. She pulls all the itchy prickly bobby pins out and shakes her head until her hair falls back around her face. That’s better, right? That’s probably better.

Another body crashes into hers; Helena deflates immediately, stumbles back in her bare feet. (She’d had shoes.) (She doesn’t really know where they went, but: she had them.) Then an arm swings around her shoulder and she smells her own shampoo and it’s Sarah.

“Hey,” Sarah yells – she has to yell over the boom-boom-boom of the music – “is this great or what?” She smells like someone’s flask. Her hair was in an updo, before, and it isn’t now. She looks so pretty. Her dress is short, and black, and she looks beautiful. Helena’s sister. Helena would punch someone in the face just for looking at Sarah wrong, but that seems like a strange thing to tell her.

She hasn’t answered the question, but Sarah doesn’t seem to mind. “Thought it’d be shit,” she yells, “but it’s actually cool! Sorta glad S made us go.”

“It’s loud,” Helena yells back.

“Well, yeah,” Sarah says, “otherwise you might have to talk to somebody.” She grins, tongue poking at her teeth. Jostles Helena a little bit. “Come on, come dance! You’re bloody terrifying on the dance floor, could use your elbows. All these handsy arseholes are driving me mad.”

“There are so _many_ ,” Helena says, staring at the dance floor.

“Whole school,” Sarah agrees. “Didn’t think there _were_ this many people at our school.”

“You would know that,” Helena says, “if you ever came.” She laughs a little as Sarah ruffles her hair. It’s easy to feel better when Sarah is there. Sarah is good at knowing when Helena needs to feel better.

“You took your hair down,” Sarah yells. “Why? Looked great.”

“Itchy,” Helena says.

“What?”

“ _Itchy_.”

“Yeah, feel that,” Sarah says. She uses the arm around her shoulder to tug Helena towards the dance floor. “Come on, meathead, _one_ song. Then you can make a run for the edges, promise. That kid Jesse from History’s here! Looks terrified, you could elbow someone for ‘im. Be his hero.”

Helena makes a garbled, embarrassed _hmglf_ noise that Sarah probably can’t hear over the song. She couldn’t fight this anyways: her sister like this is a tornado, a hurricane, a current that pulls you miles from shore. In a way it’s a relief. At least this way Helena isn’t standing against the wall.

Sarah’s hand slips into hers and Sarah’s pulling her through the crowd of bodies, people Helena thinks she maybe knows. Then they’re at the center. Sarah’s friends cheer when she comes back; someone bumps against Helena, shoves the flask in her direction. It’s too much. All the people, all the sound, too much, too close, too loud in sound and touch. But Sarah’s here, and she’s grinning, and she’s having a good time. And Helena likes her dress because she spent hours picking it out and when she looked at the mirror earlier tonight she thought, for once, she was pretty. And she likes this, maybe. She might. If she gives it time.

Helena takes the flask. When she drinks from it, it tastes like something she can’t quite name.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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